Synopsis
Dust jacket notes: "Everyone to some extent designs their own house; everyone needs to personalise the environment around them. Yet few people have succeeded as thoroughly as the critic and architect Charles Jencks in his Thematic House. Using as his basis an 1840s London town house, Jencks has created a total environment based on a symbolic programme accessible to all - the physical world of the cosmos, planets, sun, moon and seasons - yet with a rigour and attention to detail few could imagine. A former student of literature at Harvard, Jencks has brought to architectural practice a love of the possibilities inherent in literary devices such as metaphor and paradox - the subtle, often veiled means by which authors can communicate their message to the public. This has led him to produce an architecture in which the aesthetics are enhanced by meaningful form and writing. His first steps towards a symbolic architecture, the Garagia Rotunda and Elemental House, are reproduced here. From these early experiments grew the Thematic House - unique in its symbolic programmes which give meaning to nearly every detail. Various rooms within the house were realised with the collaboration of artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi and Allen Jones, architects such as Terry Farrell and Michael Graves, and Maggie Keswick Jencks, author of The Chinese Garden, who was also responsible for the garden design. Towards a Symbolic Architecture is a powerful argument in favour of symbolic design. The book opens with a forceful exposition by Jencks of his belief in the importance of a meaningful environment. Jencks then makes a brief journey through the stages of his architectural development before arriving at the Thematic House. Room by room descriptions are profusely illustrated in colour with specially commissioned photographs by Richard Bryant...." Hardcover, 9.5 x 12.3 inches, 248 pages, 300 illustrations in full color, Index.
From Publishers Weekly
Jencks's Thematic House in London, a reworking of an 1840s townhouse, fulfills his view that modern architecture can embody personal symbolism. The entrance room, called the Cosmic Oval, is meant to suggest the Big Bang. On its walls, huge, fiery figures of Thomas Jefferson, Hannah Arendt and Pythagoras debate and ponder. Most of the other rooms illustrate a specific theme, with arcane borrowings that range from Baroque to Art Nouveau. Depending upon the viewer's taste, this microcosm of the universe is either a messy, eclectic riot of styles or a dream vision. An influential architect and critic, Jencks discusses Egypt's pyramids, Chinese gardens and Gaudi's buildings as examples of symbolic architecture. While one can applaud his plea to reunite the everyday with the cosmos, his own buildings directed to this end are cold and contrived. The rest of this lavishly illustrated essay deals with the Elemental House in Los Angeles, a studio isolated in the woods and a converted Scottish farm, all designed or built by Jencks. December
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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